There was a short silence before Pyke said, ‘I’m still not quite sure why you think I’m the right man to help you.’ Outside a thin, yellow fog had enveloped the street and the figures on the pavements appeared fleetingly in the gloom, like marks on blotting paper, illuminated by the occasional gas lamp.
Morris coiled the chain of his fob-watch around his finger. ‘Rockingham used to own a sugar plantation in Jamaica but he sold up and came home when Parliament finally outlawed slavery. Rumour has it he once raped a slave girl and when she gave birth to his child, strangled it in front of her. I also heard that after a slave rebellion a few years ago, he personally took charge of the reprisals. He whipped his slaves so hard you couldn’t see skin for blood and he then rubbed hot pepper into their wounds.’
‘He sounds like a despicable fellow but you haven’t answered my question.’
That drew a pained sigh. ‘Look, Pyke, I’m aware that we hardly know one another but I’d like to think I’m a good judge of character. You call things by their name and you seem to have a knack of imposing yourself on situations.’
Pyke didn’t react, trying to make it clear he wouldn’t be won over by such barefaced praise. But he was also intrigued. He was intrigued as to why Peel was so interested in a headless corpse discovered floating in a river near Huntingdon and what, if anything, this had to do with the problems Morris and the Grand Northern Railway were facing from the radicals.
‘The Grand Northern’s act of incorporation permits us to borrow a certain sum of money each year to facilitate our work and supplement the capital accrued from private investors. I’m in a position to offer your bank the exclusive contract for this business.’
Pyke digested what Morris had said and wondered, in turn, whether the older man already knew that Peel had him over a barrel. ‘As you doubtless know, my bank has already invested heavily in your railway, misguidedly it seems, because the share price refuses to rise into double figures.’ Two years earlier, Pyke had purchased a thousand shares with the bank’s funds and had seen this investment plummet in value by more than half.
‘I’m sorry about your losses, but you need to be patient. In the long run, those shares will be worth a lot more than you paid for them.’
‘And in the meantime?’
‘In the meantime I’m offering you a good deal. To put it in strict money terms, the figure we’ll be looking to borrow — say, a hundred thousand pounds — will earn you interest payments of, let’s say, eight thousand pounds in the first year alone, and because the whole enterprise is underwritten by the government, the risk to your bank is minimal.’
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Pyke said, quickly. ‘We’ll toss a coin. If it lands on heads, you have yourself a deal.’
‘And if it lands on tails?’
Pyke removed a sovereign from his purse and balanced it on his finger. ‘If it lands on tails, you’ll give me that watch you can’t stop touching.’
‘I couldn’t possibly gamble this watch,’ Morris said, appalled. ‘It’s a solid gold, English verge with a champleve dial. There are diamonds on the case.’ He took the watch out to show Pyke. ‘It must be worth hundreds and it’s a family heirloom.’
‘Then we don’t have an agreement.’
‘God, you drive a hard bargain, don’t you?’ Morris stared at him through rheumy eyes.
‘If you win, I’ll come with you to Cambridge as you want me to.’
Morris seemed flummoxed and Pyke was about to return the coin to his purse when the older man relented. ‘Heads I win?’
Pyke smiled. It told him that Morris knew nothing about Peel’s successful attempt to blackmail him. The sovereign landed in the palm of his hand, the King’s head facing upwards. Morris clapped his hands in obvious delight and relaxed back into the horsehair cushion.
‘By way of recompense, perhaps you’ll allow me the honour of inviting you to my home. I’m quite sure my wife would be delighted to make your acquaintance. She’d heard you were one of our new neighbours and asked if I’d ever met you before.’
Pyke felt his suspicion returning. ‘Oh? Perhaps I know her. What’s her name?’
‘Marguerite.’
‘Is she French?’
‘No, but we met in France, while I was overseeing the construction of a waterway near Paris.’
‘I don’t know anyone by the name of Marguerite.’ For some reason, this thought made Pyke feel better.
Morris winked conspiratorially. ‘Actually, her name used to be plain old Margaret but she changed it to Marguerite after she moved to the Continent.’
‘Margaret? As in Maggie?’ Suddenly he could feel his heart beating a little quicker.
‘I’ve only ever known her as Marguerite. But she’s the most bewitching creature I’ve ever met in my life.’
Men had said the same thing about Maggie Shaw. Maggie, who’d left London to start a new life on the Continent…
Pyke took a deep breath and struggled to get a grip of himself. It couldn’t be her. But the thought that it might be her wouldn’t go away, and half an hour later, when the carriage swept along the driveway and came to a halt at the front of the steps leading up to Morris’s elegant Palladian villa, his stomach was iced with apprehension.
THREE
More than half of his life had passed since Pyke had last seen her. Then she had merely been plain old Maggie Shaw, daughter of hard-working costermonger parents, but it was clear even then that her efforts to scrape off the dirtiness associated with her family’s job would find success. Maggie may have sworn, blasphemed and fucked like everyone else in the rookery, but even in the foulest conditions she’d glide through ankle-deep mud like a ballerina gracing the Parisian stage.
If she recognised Pyke, she did not show it. As she shook his hand, she could just as easily have been looking at a butcher’s boy delivering a tray of meat. ‘I’m happy to make your acquaintance, sir,’ she purred in an unrecognisably polished voice. Her hollow stare gave nothing away.
Time evaporated.
Fifteen years earlier, he’d watched from behind a flower stall as she had boarded a stagecoach bound for Dover, wondering with mounting panic whether he would ever see her again. Now, all these years later, he could still recall her face as she’d looked up and down the street, trying to conjure him out of thin air, using only the ferocity of her will. It had taken all of his self-control not to push the flower seller to one side and join her on the coach, and ever since then the scent of primroses conspired to induce feelings of such melancholy he could barely move his limbs.
She was as beautiful as he remembered, more so perhaps, if that was possible, but she no longer possessed the false naivety of the young girl he had once known. Standing there, he could admire her flawless complexion, her buxom, well-proportioned figure, her cool, intelligent eyes and her slender, creamy white arms, but he couldn’t help mourning the girl he’d once known and a time in their lives that could never be recovered.
‘Do come in, old chap,’ Morris boomed, oblivious to his discomfort, leading them through an airy saloon that extended through the full height of the house. ‘I’m delighted you accepted my invitation. Perhaps next time we might have the pleasure of your wife’s company?’
Pyke bowed his head just low enough that he could continue to study Marguerite’s expression.
‘So you’re married, Mr Pyke,’ she whispered in a low, smoky voice that reminded him of an oboe.
‘Pyke. It’s always just been Pyke.’ He met her stare but it slipped effortlessly from his face.
‘And what’s your wife’s name, Mr Pyke?’
‘Emily.’
‘Delightful. How long have you been married?’
‘Almost six years.’ Instinctively he wrapped his fingers around a length of silver chain fixed to his belt with two keys attached to it. One of the keys opened the safe in the vault of his bank; the other, an old rusty object, had a more personal significance. During their courtship, Emily had risked her liberty by smuggling it to his cell in the condemned block at Newgate. Pyke had used the key to release his handcuffs and leg-irons and aid his escape from the prison. Even six years later, the sheer audaciousness and courage of her actions took his breath away, and he had carried it with him ever since as a reminder of what she had done for him.